Monthly Musings: January 2025
hellooooo 2025!
Hello, friends! Happy new year! Welcome to Monthly Musings: January 2025, our first post of the year! How are you keeping? I hope you had a great Christmas, filled to the brim with plenty of mince pies, festive fun, and an abundance of relaxation time. I myself had a delightful 9-days off from work, and it, along with actually the whole of December, was lovely! Highlights include: festive drinks out with my besties, the second annual cocktail/horror-Christmas movie night with our foodie friends, an evening out with my work colleagues - where, btdubz, I lucked out with the sweetest kris kindle gift, a Passionate Baker apron! - family time aplenty, and, of course, Husband’s birthday on NYE! We celebrated with his family, drinking vodka martinis (a newfound 2024 fave!), eating Domino’s pizza, and watching the fireworks; it was lovely!
Since new year’s, we’ve been taking it super chill and slowly easing back into a normal routine. There’s been a lot of couch time, sloth-ing around, and general laziness — but isn’t that what Gentle January is all about? No pressure, a little extra grace, and no guilt. With that in mind, I’ll be over here, trying to become one with our couch and feeling absolutely no qualms about it. Join me, it’s so refreshing!
Our Monthly Musings: January 2025 post is below. All of the usual suspects are included — travel, recipes, movies, books, etc. — along with, as is tradition for January’s MM post, a massive recap from the year just gone. If you need me, you can find me on the couch, as previously mentioned 😉
Enjoy!
monthly musings: january 2025
Admittedly, December was a relatively slow month on the blog for new posts. The craze that accompanies the run up to Christmas occupied my time to the max — but I did manage to share A Food & Drink Guide to Huế, Vietnam! My second and final food-centric post from our time in Vietnam, it’s jampacked with many a delicious morsel. I have one final Vietnamese travel guide coming this month - A Complete Guide to Hội An - and, while not specifically a ‘food & drink guide’, the ratio you should prepare for is about 60% food and 40% everything else. Sorry/not sorry, but the best way to explore a city is by the food!
*
2024 was a pretty big year for the blog! Namely: the big move over from WordPress to Substack at the end of June. *Sidenote: coincidentally, the last time I moved the blog across the internet was in June 2020! Maybe June is some transitional period for me? Wild!* The whole move took about a month all in, but it was so worth it! Sure, there’s less control/design flexibility, but there’s also no more coding headaches, loading problems, space issues, site blackouts(!), etc., so it’s safe to say I am a firm Substack convert! Also! The move to Substack has really broadened the blog’s readership - views are up & subscription numbers are double what they were before the move; which is so mind blowing! I’m eternally grateful for the creative outlet this corner of the internet gives me, but the fact that people actually like stopping by for a perusal is the icing on the cake! I’m so glad you’re here, friends ❤️
*
2024 was also a pretty big year for my own personal travels! Throughout the year, I visited six countries - although, technically, I touched-down on eight but never left the airports of two! - , of which, four were new-to-me, and explored eleven different cities! I took 18 flights between 11 different airports - the largest number of flights I’ve ever taken in a single year, beating my previous PB of 16 in 2015 - stepped foot on two continents, and spent a total of 40-nights sleeping in a foreign country or on an airplane. What a year! Future travel years have a lot to live up to!
*
In total last year, I published 36 different posts — which is miles better than 2023’s measly 17! There were 19 travel guides, 12 monthly musings posts, 3 travel memoir-esque posts, 1 bucket list, and 1 recipe of sorts. I know the guides and recipes are what draw people in, but, between you and me, the monthly musing posts are some of my very favourite to write. I love that they offer little glimpses into my life beyond the blog and, whenever I sit down to write the new one, I always read the previous year’s post to see how things have changed. It’s so fascinating! Do you keep a journal or something similar? It’s so cathartic.
*
Stats-wise, I always think it’s so interesting to see what posts have been popular throughout the year! The #1 most visited travel guide last year by a mind-boggling margin was A Quick Guide to Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, with Two Weeks in Japan | Our Honeymoon Itinerary following it up in second place. The next three in line were also Japan-related: Four Days in Osaka, Japan, Four Days in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and A Food & Drink Guide to Kyoto, Japan, respectively. Villefranche-sur-Mer has held the top spot since publication back in ‘23, so I’m not too surprised by that — but I’m thrilled to see that the Japanese guides have been so popular! I spent many, many(!) hours trying to figure out how to convey the magic of Japan into those posts, so I’m extremely happy they’re popular!
*
On a similar/less stats-oriented note, I thought it’d be fun to look back over my own faves from the year! It’s a toughie, but if I had to choose my absolute top post, I’d probably go with Japan Travel Tips | Notes From Our Honeymoon; my inner Virgo just loves how categorized and easy-to-read the whole thing is! Second place is also a tough call, but I’m feeling drawn to Part II of my 30 Countries in 30 Years series. Obviously I’m partial to the entire series (part i here, and part iii here), but part ii uncovers how Italy became my gateway drug to the wide world of travel, so. Third place would have to go to one of my mini-moon guides, Two Days in Modena, Italy, because a. we ate so well there and b. I love those photos. And lastly, rounding out my favourites from the year, forth and fifth for me is a tie between A Girly Getaway to Glasgow, Scotland and A Food & Drink Guide to Hanoi, Vietnam, because they’re both so joyous. What was your favourite post from the year?
*
I’m trying to think if there were any standout recipes I baked last year. At the risk of sounding like a Nicola Lamb fangirl — which, truthfully, I totally am — my favourite bake of the year was probably this Chocolate Cremeux Pie. It ticked every box for me: flakey pie dough, a lighter than air chocolate custard filling of my dreams, and a generous dollop of cloud-like whipped cream. So! Good! Nicola was the loveliest teacher on PUFF The Bakery Pastry Course I did back in 2020, and I’m so happy to finally see her work getting the recognition it deserves! If you’re interested, here’s a link to her Substack. I have a feeling you’re going to love her deep-dives as much as I do!
*
According to our Letterboxd, we watched 207 movies last year! That’s 27 more than we watched the year before, and is the equivalent of watching something crazy like 1.7-movies a day! Standout thumbs-up movies from our list include: The Holdovers, which we loved so much we watched 3-times(!), Perfect Days for its depiction of Japan, Juror #2, Challengers for making tennis sexy, Everybody Wants Some!!, La Chimera for the art history/archaeology/Josh O’Connor nerd in me, and My Old Ass for the lols. Standout thumbs-down movies from our list include Poor Things, Night Swim, and The Strangers: Chapter I. What made it onto your hit and miss lists?
*
Book wise, I only managed to squeeze in 18 books last year. Two standouts for me were Strangers by Taichi Yamada, The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult. The former is likely because of, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, my newfound honeymoon induced love-affair with all things Japan, and the latter is because my love of a. cheese-tastic love stories and b. the also forementioned art history/archaeology nerd in me. I’m hoping to get back into reading again this year, but on the whole, 18 isn’t really that bad! Do you have any favourite reads from last year?
And there we have it, our first monthly musings post of the year! Phew — that was a biggie!
Let’s catch-up again in February, yeah?
Hugs,
Vicki xo
PS! Above photo of the sunrise at Bray Head was snapped by Husband on December 24th! Isn’t it gorgeous? I’m obsessed!
related january posts
2024 // 2023
2022 // 2021
2020 // 2019
Such a lovely post 🥹 here’s to a relaxing start to 2025. Happy NY!!!